Personal communications is on the brink of an unprecedented expansion of its capabilities. With the advent of advanced personal communications services, such as cellular telephone and low earth orbit (LEO) satellite services, this expansion of capabilities also benefits mobile users. Not only does the expansion of capabilities benefit voice communications, but it also benefits data communications, such as might be used with portable computers and other personal data communicators.
A major difficulty with the expansion of services is that a wide variety of different voice and data communications protocols have been proposed. It can be expected that this variety will increase, both world-wide and within a local area. For example, each communications service has its own technical, geographic and feature sets. Technical parameters include frequency(ies), modulation and protocol used, among others. Geographic parameters are dictated by the particular locale. Feature sets describe whether the service is voice, paging, data, or some combination of these.
As a consequence, a given communications device will become less useful as its user attempts to use it in areas that use incompatible services. For example, as people who rely on mobile communications move through a day, they can move in and out of different coverage areas and their communications needs will change constantly. Further, even within a local area, a given communications device will gradually become less useful as its built-in capabilities are rendered out-of-date by newer services.
It is clearly undesirable for the individual to have to carry a different communication device for each communication service. Also, few individuals really want to know the details and peculiarities of each of the available communication service. Most individuals would much rather have seamless service that is simple, convenient and cost-effective for the user.
Therefore, it is advantageous to have a single personal communications device that will reconfigure itself to be compatible with whatever communications service is desired or needed. This is difficult with today's conventional technology.